Success in A Minor

I have finally decided on a non-difficult way to rewrite my short story (titled Wilby Lake) effectively. Here's a sample from the opening:

Wilby Lake

By G!

There's a lake at Wilby Lake.

There's a town called Wilby Lake that used to be right next to Wilby Lake. Now, Wilby Lake is at the bottom of Wilby Lake. Because some years back, the St. Lawrence River got so high, the town built in the lowlands two kilometers away, flooded.

There’s rumored to be zombies in Wilby Lake; zombies of the inhabitants of the now underwater Wilby Lake.

There's a bus stop that stops right at the fringe of Wilby Lake, that bus stop has stopped there a long time ago, but busses don't stop there anymore.

Confusing, eh?

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.” – Luke Jackson

People have always had trouble understanding me. It began I think when I was four years old, or maybe five, I can’t remember; it was sudden and totally uncalled for. As I was told, one day, I walked into the kitchen in the morning and told my mother I’d like pancakes for breakfast. My mother told me she just stared at me then because she couldn’t understand what I was talking about, and she asked me to repeat the sentence, I did, and she failed to understand what I said, again. I didn’t understand how my mother did not understand the sentence “I’d like pancakes for breakfast please”, I still don’t. It turned out to be, as she explained after she told me I had to get the pancakes myself from the pan for her to get what I was going at, that she did not understand the way I said “I’d like pancakes for breakfast please”. It seemed odd, and it has been so ever since.

It’s not that I don’t think properly, or that I have trouble forming comprehensible speech; the problem seems to be the fact that to everyone’s ears except my own…well, an example then, since I don’t even believe such nonsense myself: when I think “I was talking” and I say “I was talking” and to my own sound ears I hear “I was talking”, to other people (so they say), it would sound something along the lines of “Talked ised me.” If you didn’t understand that transition, neither did I and neither did the fifty or so speech therapists my well-to-do parents took me to who all exclaimed in horror at my horrid speech patterns (actually, they told us my speech lacked pattern, that was apparently the problem) which I did and do not feel I actually have. I was at a complete loss; it was clear to everyone that I have trouble speaking English properly, everyone that is, excluding me! I am the only person in this whole world I live in who does not have trouble understanding me, or rather, me speaking, but since people are society animals and talking is in the fundamental genes, talking weird makes communication a heck lot difficult, for everyone but me, that is. So here’s my conclusion: I understand my thoughts, I understand what comes out of my mouth in words because I hear it in my head as I’m quite everyone does in theirs, and nobody else understands what I say, and later, what I write. What may look and sound like “I have to go to the washroom” sounds like such incomprehensible syllable mash-up gibberish to other people I gave up trying to find out what other people are hearing of my words in kindergarten. I chose to speak as infrequent as humanly and communicatively possible.

All this happened before Simona was born, so everyone in the family took some time getting used to my apparently sudden and mysterious speech change except her. She listened to my so-called difficult speech growing up while I babysat her and thank heaven and earth she didn’t copy my speech and grow up to speak just like I do (or so they say I do). My grandmother was especially horrified to learn of my inability to communicate verbally with people, she had high hopes I would become a senator in the parliament, which would require a lot of public speaking chops. Well, when her hopes were dashed she had a heart attack soon after; she joined my grandfather, who I had never known in the Sims family plot down in the cemetery. 

My ever-supportive parents were quick to assure me I had nothing to do with the cause of my dear grandmother’s heart attack and ensuing death, though I’m quite sure if it weren’t for the extra large inheritance she left behind they’d loath me quite badly. Fortunately, the outcome of events was most well in my parent’s favor they forgave me for bearing such a fatal flaw (so they say), while I swear on my own grave in the future, I DON’T HAVE A SPEECH PROBLEM…well, depends who do you trust more, the narrator, or the characters.

If you have any suggestions at all, please fell free to scroll down there and comment (the quote is from a movie called Cool Hand Luke, it's a really cool movie and I highly recommend it), and if you'd like to read the original, comment as well and I'll post the link to where that version is posted.